Category Archives: Public services policy

Rachel Reeves may have to find more money to fix public services, says IFS

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Institute for Fiscal Studies says budget allows for rise in public service spending this year and next, but not thereafter

Rachel Reeves could be forced to find more money to fix public services after her budget made a start at reversing the “unrealistic” and irresponsible spending plans of the Conservatives, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said.

Britain’s leading experts on the government’s finances said the chancellor’s tax measures on Wednesday had allowed for a substantial short-term increase in public service spending this year and next, but not thereafter.

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Labour wants to reverse decline – but with a big budget comes a big risk

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The government knows cynical voters will need to see tangible change in public services and to feel better off

At the final political cabinet before Rachel Reeves delivered her first budget this week, ministers were presented with internal party research on what the public was expecting.

In the months since the general election, they had been fed a regular diet of gloomy warnings about the state of the economic inheritance and, more recently, high levels of pre-budget news coverage, so it was firmly on their horizon.

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Chancellor announces £22.6bn cash injection for NHS in England

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Rachel Reeves hails biggest increase ‘outside of Covid’ since 2010 but health experts say patients may not feel impact

The NHS in England is to receive a £22.6bn cash injection over two years, the chancellor has announced, in what she called the biggest spending increase outside Covid since 2010. But health experts said patients may not feel the impact as much of the increase would be absorbed by pay rises and higher care costs.

Announcing the “down payment” on the government’s 10-year plan for the NHS, due in spring 2025, Rachel Reeves said the NHS was the nation’s “most cherished public service” and that the extra funding would help the government cut waiting lists.

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Parents trapped in special needs tribunal backlog as disputes surge by 50%

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Waits of more than a year for hearings into councils’ failure to meet growing needs of Send children

Parents are having to wait more than a year for tribunal hearings into ­inadequate provision for children with special educational needs after new cases surged by more than 50% in a year.

The National Audit Office last week highlighted the worsening ­crisis in the special educational needs and ­disabilities (Send) system, with ­cash-strapped councils unable to meet rising need amid a lack of ­suitable school and college places.

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Special educational needs bill in England hits record £10bn a year

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National Audit Office report finds no signs of improvement in lives of pupils despite record spending

The bill for special needs education in England has hit £10bn a year, with the number of children and young people entitled to government support in the form of education, health and care plans set to double to 1 million within a decade, a landmark report has found.

The investigation by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that despite record levels of spending there had been no signs of improvement in the lives of children with special educational needs (SEN).

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Wes Streeting denies ‘dystopian future’ over weight-loss jabs for unemployed

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UK health secretary says people will not be ‘involuntarily jabbed’ but that medications could be ‘gamechanging’

Wes Streeting has denied his plans to give new weight-loss jabs to unemployed people to help them back into work would result in a “dystopian future” where overweight people would be “involuntarily jabbed”.

The UK health secretary acknowledged that weight-loss drugs were not, on their own, the answer to the nation’s obesity crisis after he suggested this week that they could have a “monumental” impact on getting more people working.

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Rachel Reeves will tax businesses to plug £9bn black hole in NHS

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The chancellor is set to announce a revenue-raising budget designed to reset Britain’s public finances

Rachel Reeves is set to use one of the most pivotal budgets of recent times to call on businesses to pay more tax to help restore the NHS, amid warnings that the health service has been left with a £9bn hole in its finances.

The chancellor is expected to stake her reputation on a tax-­raising budget designed as a reset of the public finances. She has already had to deal with cabinet skirmishes over funding unveiled alongside the statement. However, Reeves is understood to believe that the public will accept a multibillion-pound hike in business taxes if it is linked to repairing the health system’s finances.

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Surprise fall in UK inflation badly timed for benefit recipients

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Payments such as universal credit linked to previous September’s figure, meaning a rise of just 1.7% in April

Last month’s surprise fall in UK inflation lands with bad timing for millions of people who receive state benefits linked to the figure, who can now expect their payments to rise by just 1.7% next April.

A number of benefits, including universal credit, are increased each tax year in line with the cost of living figure for the previous September.

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Labour needs £25bn a year in tax rises to rebuild public services, warns IFS

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Thinktank says tax increases in budget will be necessary even if Rachel Reeves changes fiscal rules

Keir Starmer’s promise to end austerity and rebuild public services will require tax increases of £25bn a year in the coming budget even if debt rules are changed to provide scope for extra investment spending, a leading thinktank has said.

In its preview of the first Labour budget in 14 years, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said Rachel Reeves would need to raise taxes to fresh record levels to meet the government’s policy goals. The chancellor was also warned of the risk of a Liz Truss-style meltdown if the City responded badly to substantially higher borrowing.

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Poor NHS maternity care in danger of becoming normalised, regulator warns

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CQC issues damning report on maternity services in England as minister admits anxiety over ‘risk of disaster’

Maternity services in England are so inadequate that cases of women receiving poor care and being harmed in childbirth are in danger of becoming “normalised”, the NHS regulator has said.

A Care Quality Commission (CQC) report based on inspections of 131 maternity units sets out an array of problems, adding to the sense of crisis that has enveloped an NHS service that cares for the 600,000 women a year who give birth and their babies.

Some women, frustrated at facing such long delays in being assessed at triage, discharge themselves before they are seen.

65% of units are not safe for women to give birth in, 47% of trusts are rated as requiring improvement on safety and another 18% are rated as inadequate.

Some hospitals do not record incidents that have resulted in serious harm.

There is a widespread lack of staff and in some places a lack of potentially life-saving equipment.

Hospitals do not always consider women’s suffering after receiving poor care.

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‘We need to hear about hope’: unions greet Keir Starmer TUC speech with mixed emotions

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Enthusiasm for public sector pay awards tempered by concern over winter fuel payment cuts and job losses

“We’re hearing an awful lot about tough times: it’s like being in a Dickens novel. What comes after the tough times? We need to hear about hope.”

Onay Kasab, the national lead officer for the Unite trade union, was addressing a leftwing fringe meeting, but similar sentiments reverberated through the bars and coffee shops at this week’s TUC congress in Brighton.

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Councils in England draining reserves to stay afloat, leaders say

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Survey of 24 city authorities finds two in five plan to sell off assets and reduce services

Local authority leaders say they are having to drain their financial reserves to keep services afloat and avoid effective bankruptcy.

A survey of the mid-tier group of English city councils, which includes Southampton, Hull, Sunderland and Norwich, found that many that had previously avoided financial difficulties during periods of austerity were close to running out of funds.

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NHS queues mean most Britons expect to pay for healthcare, says report

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Joseph Rowntree Foundation points to ‘critical shift in expectations’ and says the public now budget for many routine services

Most people in the UK now believe they will have to spend their own money on private healthcare for routine services such as dentistry, physiotherapy and counselling because they won’t be able to get them quickly on the NHS, pioneering new research has found.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says its findings, based on extensive focus group analysis, is evidence that Britons have undergone a “critical shift in expectations” about the health service’s capacity to meet their needs.

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Voters believe Labour on UK’s woes, but not on its proposed fixes

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Keir Starmer struggling to sell his remedies for the problems facing Britain after Tory mess

The prime minister is struggling to communicate how his government will address the significant problems facing the UK. While the public readily accepts that the last government left a mess, selling Labour’s remedies as necessary or fair is proving more challenging.

The incoming government’s first job was to assign blame for the country’s current woes. This proved relatively easy, given the last ­government’s unpopularity and the Conservatives’ poor campaign.

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Starmer faces pushback from pubs over ‘bonkers’ outdoor smoking curb plans

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Hospitality industry expresses concern about impact on businesses of leaked proposals not denied by PM

Keir Starmer is on a collision course with the hospitality industry and political opponents after signalling plans for major curbs on outdoor smoking.

The proposals, not denied by the prime minister, would potentially prohibit tobacco use outside pubs and restaurants, including on pavements. The restrictions would come on top of existing plans to gradually outlaw smoking year by year.

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Victims of UK’s infected blood scandal to start receiving payouts by end of year

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Those affected by contaminated blood transfusions and products in 1970s and 80s to finally receive compensation

A new authority set up to properly compensate the victims and families of the infected blood scandal is due to start making payments by the end of this year.

The Infected Blood Compensation Authority (IBCA) was set up after the inquiry in May into the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS concluded that governments, the health service and doctors had repeatedly failed victims. Regulations enacting the compensation scheme were laid out on Friday.

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‘Share government data to boost economy’, says UK statistics watchdog chief

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The UK Statistics Authority’s chair says linking data sets from departments could aid growth and improve services

• We need to make data sharing across government the rule

Ministers could find ways to boost the economy and improve public services by combining data from separate government departments, according to the head of the UK’s statistics watchdog.

Sir Robert Chote, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, said that too often government data was “siloed” because departments and other bodies were worried that people may uncover weaknesses in the data or even reach inconvenient conclusions.

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Labour must raise GP funding to end ‘8am scramble’, says doctors’ group

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General practices forced to ‘do more and more with less and less’, says Doctors’ Association UK

Labour’s promise to “end the 8am scramble” for medical appointments will be impossible without increasing core funding for GPs, according to a leading medical association.

The health secretary, Wes Streeting, pledged during the general election campaign that Labour would “end the 8am scramble by allowing patients to easily book appointments to see the doctor they want, in the manner they choose”.

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Challenges to deprivation of liberty orders in England soar by a third

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Campaigners say vulnerable people receiving care are being deprived of their freedom in order to save money

Growing numbers of vulnerable people receiving care are challenging deprivation of liberty (Dol) orders that can mean they are locked up or kept under restrictive supervision.

Dol orders are meant as a last resort but campaigners say the increase shows that too often people’s freedoms are restricted as a cheaper option.

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English hospitals brace for ‘alarming’ disruption as GPs go on strike

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Exclusive: A&Es and mental health services face ‘dangerous’ surge that could continue into 2025, say bosses

The NHS faces “alarming” and “dangerous” disruption until Christmas and potentially into 2025, health chiefs have said, after GPs began their first industrial action in 60 years amid a major row over funding.

Hospitals, A&E units and mental health services are already under huge pressure. They are now braced for a surge in demand from thousands of patients turning to them for help after family doctors in England launched work-to-rule action on Thursday.

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